IT'S VERY
NEW SCHOOL
2017
PHOTOGRAPHY
ARCHIVE
The Student Body by Maria McKinney
- Recent scientific research has named the stomach the second brain. It communicates with the actual brain, influencing its functionality and having a measurable effect on things like mood and emotions.
During her residency in Blessington Community College, McKinney worked through this idea of the second brain in relation to the student body. In these times of protest, exploring the potential of collectivity seems pertinent. The student body has the power to influence the host if they work together to communicate their concerns.
The Square by Sarah Pierce
- Sarah Pierce used Bertolt Brecht’s experimental plays without an audience as a starting point for developing a new work with the students in Blessington which they would be the authors, the cast and the audience, resulting in a performance titled The Square.
The performance itself takes place during the opening of the exhibition, in the gallery space, as the performers interact and migrate around the opening among the visitors. There are no characters, no plot or other narrative devices. This is more of a roaming set of memorised chants and gestures that speak quite abstractly to ideas of learning and gathering, and what it means to act, make art and be together.
The Masterplan by John Beattie and Ella de Búrca
- The Masterplan is a spoken-word opera presented as a surround sound installation which traverses the gallery space.
A selection of students’ answers are presented as the titles of books, a sculptural interpretation of the wealth of influences that inform each student’s interpretation process. The books represent the base of knowledge from which the students derived their answers, and which in turn, these answers contribute to.
A Friend in Common by Priscilla Ferandes
- A Friend in Common is a newly commissioned piece by Priscila Fernandes, in which she imagines a correspondence between modern artists, such as Picasso, Matisse, Signac, among others, and The Modern School (La Escuela Moderna, Barcelona), between 1901 and 1909.
Priscila crosses the ideologies of this particular educational program with the positions of the emerging artists, in a gesture that makes us consider the role of the artist in the shaping of an art curriculum.
How To Swim on Dry Land by Sarah Browne
- How to Swim on Dry Land was conceived in response to core concept of the exhibition, namely that the Leaving Cert curriculum does not currently address the reality of contemporary art’s place in society.
The current curriculum does not address the potential kinds of learning and discourse that can happen within the structure of an art class or an art practice. Through this short series of sessions, the Artist aimed to introduce students to a variety of examples of contemporary art practices, particularly artist film and video.
These artists, including Jillian Meyer, Martha Rosler, Emmett Kirwan and Mika Rottenberg, were prompts to consider art as a space of critique, questioning and learning as well as a means of personal expression. The group also explored the popular forms of instruction these artists often appropriated or parodied, such as TV cooking programmes, infomercials and YouTube tutorials.
The Image of the Self With and Amongst Others by Mark O'Kelly
- Mark O’Kelly has been working collaboratively with Transition Year students and the Art Department in Our Lady’s School, Terenure, to forge and to foster an understanding of contemporary art practice. A central objective of the project was to realize in the form of large scaled painting; a singular collective group portrait of the class of 20 students.
In making this painting, this project proposed to test out the power and the challenges for a group to re-consider identity in terms of the collective image of the group and the idea that ‘the whole makes for more, than the sum of the parts’.